"Does Trump Simply Love The Idea Of People Dying?"

At this point, none of the questions asked below are outlandish.

Thom Hartmann, Common Dreams, June 25, 2020:

Two weeks after America diagnosed its first case of COVID-19, Republicans in the United States Senate (with the single exception of Mitt Romney) refuse to vote to impeach Donald Trump.

They decided he couldn't do much more damage than he already has, and, as Senator Susan Collins suggested, he would back down from his most outrageous behavior because his hands had been slapped by the House of Representatives.

Now, newly empowered and feeling invincible, he seems hellbent on a crusade to kill hundreds of thousands of Americans.

Nobody knows why Trump is so enthusiastic about encouraging people to get sick and die from COVID-19, although there are a couple possibly viable theories.

Trump's and Republicans' rhetoric all shifted a day or two after April 7, the day that the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN and other national media reported that Black and Hispanic people were dying of COVID at about twice the rate of white people. Is it possible Trump and the racists in his Party think this is a good way to reduce the Black and Hispanics population, or at least that it's not an issue for white people?

Another possibility has to do with Freedomworks, the group that was largely raised to prominence by rightwing billionaires and helped fund the so-called Tea Party movement. Billionaires want their people back at work, be they in refineries or meat processing plants or retail stores, and they know that if some of those workers get sick and die there's a never-ending supply of poor, unemployed people willing to replace them.

A third possibility is that Trump simply loves the idea of people dying. This is the most bizarre of all these possibilities, but it appears to be a characteristic shared by strongman governments around the world, from Duterte in the Philippines who encourages police to murder drug users to Bolsonaro in Brazil who is enthusiastically taking actions that are killing indigenous people in the Amazon.

As we hit what CNN is calling "apocalyptic levels" of coronavirus infections, it would be really useful to know why Donald Trump is so enthusiastic about so many Americans dying.

Why did he refuse to allow America to use the World Health Organization coronavirus test kit back in January, February, March—and to this day?

Why did he spend two months denying the obvious fact that this virus was coming to the United States and was deadly, leaving us utterly unprepared?

Why does he refuse to set a good example for Americans by wearing a face mask? Is he more concerned about smearing his makeup than the death of 200,000 Americans?

Why did he order his goons to intercept shipments of personal protective equipment and ventilators going to blue states? Where is all that equipment that he hijacked, and does he plan to offer it exclusively to red state governors? Is all this death just about politics?

Why is he shutting down testing sites in multiple states next week after bragging in his Tulsa rally that he told his people to "slow down" the testing?

Is it possible he's trying to let things get so bad that a vaccine in the fall will be seen as an effective October Surprise? Is that why the vaccine companies have gotten billions of federal dollars in what Trump calls "Operation Warp Speed" while rural hospitals across the country continue to close?

Since the work of Louis Pasteur and Joseph Lister just after the American Civil War, the world has known how to deal with infectious diseases. Why has Trump worked so hard to convince his followers to ignore almost 200 years of medical science?

And what is it about right-wing leaders embracing death by pandemic? If Trump was the only leader in the world doing this, it might make it easier to figure out. But wealthy oligarchs who have taken over countries around the world are doing the same thing.

Why do these leaders want their people to die? Why does Trump want more Americans to die?

Media critic Eric Boehlert summarizes the importance of determining Donald Trump's motives this way:

[T]he media's preferred storyline that suggests Trump is simply incompetent doesn't add up because Trump has made the wrong decision every single time in terms of how crises like this are supposed to be dealt with. ... It's increasingly not believable for the press to suggest Trump has been distracted or inept during this crisis, in part because of the level of White House uselessness has become so staggering.

Maybe Trump's vengeful. Maybe he wants to wreck the economy to create investment opportunities? He's under the thumb of a foreign entity? He wants to cause panic and cancel the November elections? He's a fatalist? Who knows. And honestly, the specific "why" isn't what matters now. What matters is asking the difficult questions and pondering what the Trump presidency is truly about, no matter what lurks in the shadows….

Now the press needs to shift some of its focus and ask the truly alarming questions about Trump and his motives. Because we still don't know why he essentially ordered the federal government to stand down for the virus invasion.

Psychologist and psychotherapist John Gartner refers to Donald Trump as a malignant narcissist, whose mental pathologies compel him to hurt and kill large numbers of people — including his own supporters.

Dr. Gartner told Salon back in April that violence and sadism are central to Trump's decision-making. Trump enjoys causing harm and suffering and the 125,000 dead Americans during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic is part of his addiction to causing harm.

Malignant narcissists are very sick people. They are sick in such a deep, disturbed and dark way that a normal person cannot comprehend such behavior. Therefore, normal, mentally healthy people cannot imagine or understand the mind of a malignant narcissist. ...

Trump is both denying responsibility ... [and] sabotaging the efforts to stop the coronavirus pandemic. This is a very important aspect of Trump's behavior. Trump is not just deflecting blame onto the governors, he is actively interfering with the governors' ability to do their job. Trump is not just incompetent. He is actively engaging in sabotage. ...

That is a function of how the psychology of a malignant narcissist is structured. When Trump says things such as, "I have total power," that's the grandiosity. "I'm in total control" is a function of Trump's paranoia, where everything bad is projected outward. Therefore, anything negative or bad is someone else's fault. ... The grandiosity and "greatness" are all him. Trump's mind runs on a formula which bends and twists facts, ideas and memories to suit his malignant narcissism. This is why Trump contradicts himself so easily. He lies and makes things up. His fantasies all serve his malignant narcissism and the world he has created in his own mind about his greatness.

The fourth component of Trump's malignant narcissism is sadism. That part of Trump's mind is more hidden. People such as Trump ... are driven to cause harm to other people. Trump's life is proof of this. He enjoys ripping people off and humiliating people. He does this manically and gleefully. He has lied more than 16,000 times. He threatens people online and elsewhere. I believe that Donald Trump is also a sexual sadist, who on some basic level enjoys and is aroused by watching people be afraid of him. In his mind, Trump is creating chaos and instability so that he can feel powerful.

Professor of psychiatry and psychoanalyst Otto Kernberg called that phenomenon "omnipotent destructiveness." The bullying, the violence, the destruction, frightening people, humiliating people, getting revenge and the like — such behavior is what Donald Trump has done his whole life. It is who Donald Trump really is. Unfortunately, too many people are still in denial of that fact. ...

I also believe that Donald Trump is democidal. I would even go so far as to say that he is a "democidal maniac". If you look at human history there is one trait that all malignant narcissistic leaders have in common: They kill mass numbers of their own people. Why would Donald Trump be any different? ... Malignant narcissists like Donald Trump view other human beings as kindling wood to be burned for their own personal enrichment and enlargement and expansion. ...

Malignant narcissistic leaders kill many of their own people through wars and political terror, but also through willful incompetence. These types of leaders actively do things that will kill large portions of the population. Causing harm is a type of addiction for them. ...

Like in a relationship, Donald Trump is the abuser. He is the husband or father who is abusing his partner or children or other relatives. The American people are like a woman who is leaving her abuser. She tells her abuser, "That's it! I am done with you!" She has her keys in hand and is opening the door of the house or apartment to finally leave. What happens? The democidal maniac Donald Trump will attack us, badly. Make no mistake. Donald Trump is going to find a way to attack and cause great harm to the American people if he believes that he will lose the 2020 election.

Abby Zimet, Common Dreams columnist, points out "the yawning, murderous void where leadership should have been".

Now, using the demented illogic of avoiding pregnancy by skipping a pregnancy test and halting climate change by not tracking climate, Trump wants to cut federal funding for COVID-19 testing at 13 sites in five states, including some seeing surges, because, in his immortal words, "When you do testing...You're going to find more cases." His malignant idiocy was on full, awful display at his appearance in Arizona, where he flouted both CDC guidelines and state law by packing several thousand maskless Students for Trump into a mega-church that falsely claimed it had purified the air, darkly ranted the "left-wing mob is trying to abolish our heritage," and spewed endless lies about a #TrumpVirus he grotesquely called "Kung Flu" and "China Virus" because he clearly hasn't seen this video - his dumb wall stopped Covid, it's "going away," we'll have a vaccine "very soon," "people get sick from the other," and besides, "some people can't explain what the 19" means. Then, sweating like a pig, he said the quiet homicidal part out loud: "I said to my people, slow the testing down please." Many weeks and bodies ago, some were debating if he was criminally responsible for the mounting death toll. Now, it's clear: Cue hashtag #TrumpKillsUs and two damning, truth telling ads - from the Lincoln Project and the new grassroots Meidas Touch - charging him with mass negligent homicide. Yes. Pass 'em on.